24 July, 2018 Wildlife Licensing Reforms Office of Environment and Heritage Dear Sir or Madam, Re: Wildlife licensing changes: Public consultation Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the proposed wildlife licencing changes. As the oldest museum in Australia, the Australian Museum has a long-standing involvement in wildlife licencing both as a licensee and as a recipient of specimens from licence-holders. The Australian Museum is an active stakeholder in biodiversity conservation and through our Australian Centre for Wildlife Genomics’ accreditation as a Wildlife Forensics laboratory, is an authority on the wildlife trade. By world standards, Australia has a relatively high level of regulation of native fauna and the Museum is a keen supporter of this approach. Trade, husbandry and control of native wildlife presents risks in terms of poaching, disease, genetic disruption and establishment of wild populations outside of natural ranges. Although it is costly to implement, we believe that rigorous licensing is an essential element of our conservation strategy and have previously worked with Office of Environment and Heritage on research of species kept under license where illegal trade occurred in particular during periods of ad-hoc record keeping (see Hogg et al, 2018). We acknowledge that increasing interest in Australian wildlife has increased the number of people seeking to keep wildlife and it appears that this increase is one of the drivers for this discussion paper. However, we do not agree that expanding the industry should be considered inevitable, nor do we consider it desirable to simplify regulation through codes of practice. Ultimately, we think it is important for government to recognise that licensing is an important function of government and that adequate resourcing must be provided to reflect changes in demand. While we support a risk-management approach in the amount of attention the Department gives to processing licenses with different risk levels, we consider that licensing is a more effective way of curbing growth in the wildlife trade than self-regulation through a code-of- practice approach, which are rarely successful in any industry. We have a series of specific comments below and also comments in relation to specific species (attachment 1). Section 2.3 Should licensing be retained for all activities currently requiring a threatened species licence? We strongly support licensing for all activities involving management of listed threatened species. Grey-headed Flying-foxes (GHFFs) are a listed Vulnerable species and requests for local management must be carefully evaluated. We consider that licensing should be retained for management of flying-foxes in public places unless provisions for “camp managers” in the proposed code of practice are strengthened in two areas. Firstly “camp managers” should not be permitted to commence management until they have had a response from the Environment Agency Head, following notification. It is not sufficient merely to inform the Minister and wait 3 days before proceeding. A response should be mandatory prior to commencement of any activity. Secondly, a panel of “flying-fox experts” should be accredited by the Environment Agency and only the panel of accredited experts should be permitted to advise camp managers. We acknowledge that the current process of camp management is narrow-sighted with focus on any one particular camp site at a time. Dispersal actions often lead to shifting the problem to other sites (and councils), rather than looking for a more holistic approach. Therefore, the identified steps in the process of “studying a camp” to “assessing impacts of actions” have to be done in consultation with these accredited “flying-fox experts”. As they stand, the criteria for defining an expert leave too much room for insufficiently-skilled operators. The effect of these two weaknesses in the proposed arrangements make it possible for public land managers to have significant negative impacts on this threatened species. Unless these are rectified, we consider that licensing should remain, and recommend that further strict monitoring of each step in the management process must be in place to ensure compliance with animal ethics regulations. Further regular public reporting on dispersal sites should be enforced to ensure that there is a measure of ‘success’ of such actions for future planning. In addition, shooting of flying-foxes in orchards requires continued licensing, but also ensuring improved regulation and monitoring. While the overall number of licenses issued appears to have decreased (e.g. 15 during 2016/17 season vs, 34 during 2006/7 season), the number of animals allowed to be harmed was actually 30% greater (3728 vs 1155). There has been an inherent issue with non-compliance in the past: high proportion of orchardists have been reported as shooting without a license or outside license provisions, and the methods are often in contravention of animal ethics, leaving injured animals to suffer for hours before death. The current practice of reporting the numbers of harmed GHFFs is inadequate and we acknowledge that the available resources for adequate monitoring of compliance with license are inadequate and need to be revised. Section 4.2.2 • Do you support the retention of licensing for harming protected birds? We consider that licensing provides a higher level of protection for protected species than a code of practice, and there is considerable potential for this change to increase the level of destruction of native species. We therefore support the retention of licensing. • Can you suggest any improvements to the licence conditions for harming birds? As it stands, there is considerable ambiguity in the activities that can be undertaken under a licence to harm protected birds. The nominated purposes all refer to damage mitigation associated with human activities, but the list of species harmed includes species that appear to have been killed for other reasons. For example, Table 7 indicates that 3572 Noisy Miners were harmed in 2017, but this species does not threaten human safety or property. Presumably, these licences have been issued for culling for conservation purposes associated with the Noisy Miner KTP, but this is not provided for in the current wording of the licence. There are many other situations (including macropod grazing pressure) where overabundant native species have adverse ecological impacts, rather than impacts on human safety and property, and there should be a license class that allows management of these impacts. We therefore recommend broadening the description of this class of licence to explicitly include ecological management activities, especially since it appears that some licences have already been issued for this purpose. It is our understanding that as presently described, the only explicit provision for ecological culls is through a scientific licence, which requires evaluation by an animal ethics committee. Such a process is both unnecessary and prohibitive for most land managers. We consider it a priority for licence conditions to be changed to ensure that these management options are available under the Act. • Should codes of practice be developed for harming birds in specified circumstances as an alternative to licensing? We do not support the replacement of licensing with codes of practice, because we think it will result in an increase in animal deaths, usually with little or no benefit. The suggested example of “removal of white ibis nests and eggs from public parks by councils” provides a good test case. If provided with a code of practice, Councils will be encouraged to routinely employ this tool without due consideration of non-destructive alternatives, or alternatives that require licensing. It is usually just a few ibis (the table-jumpers/sandwich-snatchers) that cause problems for people, and the most cost effective, humane and ecologically-sound method of dealing with that problem is to catch and kill the offending animal. Park managers do not tend to employ this option because they are concerned about public backlash or the difficulty of obtaining a licence. Instead, to appease park-users, they remove nests and eggs either from misunderstanding of its efficacy or simply to be seen to be doing something which people incorrectly do not perceive to be as ecologically damaging as culling adults. Ibis sometimes present a problem by nesting close to human habitation, and nest and egg destructive may occasionally be effective in causing ibis to vacate these sites. However, ibis usually re-nest in the same location following destruction of their nests and eggs and sustained removal every three weeks is usually necessary to discourage re-nesting. It is our experience that land-managers normally give up before the ibis. Habitat modification in the form of trimming, or sometimes removing, nesting substrates is generally a more effective technique for discouraging nesting. The requirement to be licensed acts as an incentive for park managers to consider the specific problem they seek to address and the options for resolving it. We consider that providing the option of an unlicensed code-of-practice will encourage an ineffective one-size-fits-all approach that will lead to unnecessary ecological harm. While we have addressed only the white ibis example, the same logic applies to other wildlife issues. Section 5.1 • Do you support the proposed staged approach to implementing a risk-based approach to regulating